Good morning, this is the regularly scheduled meeting of the sustainability and renters rights committee of the Seattle City Council.
Today is Friday, February 4th, 2022. The time is 9.31 a.m.
I am the chair of the committee, Council Member Kshama Sawant.
Would the clerk, Ted Verdone from my office, please call the roll.
Council Member Sawant?
Present.
Council Member Morales?
Aye.
Council Member Morales was muted, but she said present.
Here, yes.
Did you hear me?
Yes, now.
OK.
Council Member Juarez?
Here.
Council Member Nelson?
Present.
Council Member Peterson?
Or present.
Thank you, Ted, and welcome to all members of the committee.
We have one item on today's agenda.
It is a city council central staff presentation on the legislation from my office intended to support the grassroots campaign of climate activists who are organizing to pressure insurance companies, banks, and other large financial institutions of capitalism to end their backing of fossil fuel companies that are responsible for the overwhelming majority of the greenhouse gas emissions that have caused such climate, such alarming climate change and the kind of change that is having devastating impact on the planet and its ability to sustain life.
The legislation gives the Green New Deal Oversight Board the authority to give a rating to financial institutions that are bidding on city contracts based on their investments in fossil fuel infrastructure and their agreement to the free prior and informed consent policy It's called FPEX for short, for projects that impact the territories of indigenous peoples.
And council members will remember we had a conversation about this and a presentation from the activists who are leading this effort in Seattle as part of the nationwide and global activism.
Then if the Oversight Board provides that rating, the City Department of Finance and Administrative Services are instructed to give that rating a 20% weight in choosing which financial institution wins the contract.
Without cheap credit from banks or the backing of insurers, it would be far more difficult for fossil fuel companies to create new pipelines and other projects that will result in decades of new carbon emissions.
One part of the international movement to stop the expansion of fossil fuel infrastructure is for cities like Seattle and other governments and public institutions to refuse to do business with financial institutions that fail to agree to these demands.
When climate activists proposed this bill to my office, I was immediately excited to support it because it gives the city of Seattle the opportunity to be part of an international movement targeting the multinational corporations who are in reality responsible for climate change.
Because big business has so much political power under capitalism completely disproportionately, they continually attempt to shift the blame off themselves and, you know, blame that when they actually decide what infrastructure will run society and put the blame on the consumer habits of ordinary working people and put forward ideas of lifestyle politics.
Of course, it is good for people.
to install efficient LED light bulbs, to carpool to work, to use public transit, to do whatever possible that can be done in order to make personal choices to reduce climate impact.
But the statistical reality is that those decisions are only a tiny fraction of the sources of greenhouse gas emissions.
That's just the truth, like it or not.
Working class people do not get a choice in how electricity is generated, whether housing is affordable next to where we work.
whether buildings are climate-friendly, whether there is adequate public transportation, how cars are built and how much public transit there should be, and the vast multi-trillion dollar investments in the infrastructure that will generate the energy to power our society for decades to come.
Trillions are invested into deep-sea drilling platforms, pipelines, tar sand mines, refineries, fracking, combustion engines in automobiles.
And we should keep in mind that none of this has reduced because of the pandemic.
In fact, there are statistics that show that banks underwriting fossil fuel projects has actually gone up dramatically during the last two years.
And all these decisions are made not democratically by workers weighing in on it.
They're made in corporate boardrooms based on what will generate the greatest profits for the richest.
This is the infrastructure of society and ultimately the power structure of society that we will need to contend with to stop climate change from causing unspeakable human suffering in the decades to come.
So I'm excited by this legislation because it supports grassroots activists around the world building a movement to pressure those multinational corporations.
However, we also need to be absolutely clear that these financial institutions and fossil fuel companies are extremely powerful.
As I've just noted, they have political power and they have material power.
Even a prosperous city like Seattle is dwarfed by institutions like Liberty Mutual, which is rated extremely poorly by the report, ensuring our future 2021 scorecard on insurance, fossil fuels, and climate change, and the activists who were there at the last committee went over this point.
This bill does not include investments made by the Seattle Retirement Accounts Pension Board, which is heavily regulated by other laws, but I do strongly support the demands made by 350 Seattle and other climate activists to the board to divest from fossil fuel infrastructure, and the bill does not include grant underwriting services, which the Department of Finance and Administrative Services felt the city of Seattle did not have financial power to accomplish.
I do want to stress that Seattle alone by itself has little power against these Goliaths, but if Seattle is part of an international movement and activists are fighting for similar policies around the world, then we can have a profound impact.
For that reason, while it's extremely important that the Green New Deal Oversight Board use this authority if this ordinance passes, the real power of this ordinance will be from Seattle joining that movement around the world.
to pressure companies to cut their ties with fossil fuel infrastructure.
Boycotting everything objectionable in an attempt to maintain some sort of moral purity as a consumer simply does not work.
But a targeted boycott that is part of a political mass movement aimed around specific demands, that can have a real impact.
We've seen this before.
the work of the United Farm Workers Strike and the boycott of California grapes in the 1960s, and also, extremely importantly, to the Montgomery Bus Boycott during the Civil Rights Struggle.
Before we begin that agenda item, we do have public comment.
We have, I believe, one person signed up for public comment.
And so after the public comment, we will continue with the agenda item.
The speaker will have two minutes to speak.
And after you are prompted, please unmute and press star six.
And the name of the speaker is Angie Gerald.
Please go ahead.
Hi my name is Angie and I'm a small landlord in Ballard.
I have about a minute and a half statement to make about the naming and scope of this committee.
I want to comment at the beginning of this new 2022 legislative cycle that City Council has again chosen to title this committee Sustainability and Renters' Rights.
Rental housing or renting in Seattle.
It's been years since any small landlords or data or research about us have been included in your meetings or commissions.
We are treated unlike any other small businesses in Seattle and it isn't sustainable.
I was copied last week on the latest RRIO data which shows another sharp drop in rental unit registrations including the loss of 2,400 single unit properties in just the last nine months.
I am asking City Council to pay close attention to the impacts of your legislation and the ongoing eviction moratorium specifically on small locally owned rental properties and family sized rental properties.
The lack of exemptions for the smallest landlords is a real issue.
It is a definable and solvable one that could be acted on immediately.
Additionally I participated in an SBCI renting in Seattle webinar this past weekend as part of their home fair educational event.
SBCI staff struggled to present accurate info on new laws and misrepresented some key aspects.
They are not able to keep up in providing a baseline of support to small housing providers.
yet they've made it very clear we are still subject to the steep penalties and high-risk impacts of all of the new laws.
If the scope of this renters' rights committee does not allow discussion and analysis of the viability of locally owned rental housing, please clarify which other council committee will.
Thank you very much.
I believe that is the end of public comment.
I don't see anybody else having signed up, so we will close public comment.
and go to our agenda item.
Tom and Eric from city council central staff are here.
to present their work, their work to prepare the draft legislation, and they are available for explaining what the bill does.
And this will be an opportunity for all committee members to ask questions, voice support, or raise any concerns or anything that you feel should be clarified, and if you have amendments, to identify them.
Once we have all the questions answered, And we have some information from committee members about any potential amendments.
We will go into that, and then we'll bring the bill back to the committee for a vote.
And I definitely appreciate the work that Tom and Eric have done with this legislation, and really appreciate the support of all central staff in all the work that we do.
Tom and Mike, please introduce yourselves for the record.
And I believe you have a PowerPoint, so you can take it away.
Good morning.
Thank you, Chair Swan.
Good morning, members of the committee.
Tom Mikesell with your central staff.
Hello, good morning.
This is Eric McConaughey with your central staff.
Good morning to all.
And I believe Eric will take over the first half or so of the presentation describing the bill, and then I'll talk about additional context and some policy considerations for the committee's consideration.
Thank you.
Just if I can interrupt, Eric, before you start, I just wanted to note for public record that Council Member Lewis has joined the meeting.
Thank you, Council Member Lewis.
Welcome.
So I'll jump right in.
I'll begin by describing the policy goals of this bill.
As the chair described in her opening remarks, the goal of this bill is to accelerate the divestment in fossil fuel infrastructure with the goal of decreasing harmful emissions.
and to promote social responsibility on the part of bidders to any RFPs for banking and insurance services in the form of adopting free prior and informed consent policies, as recognized by the UN.
So those are the key pieces to understand, and they're reflected in the amendments that we'll talk about.
Next slide, please.
So the bill would amend different parts of the code.
The portion of the code that refers to the Green New Deal Oversight Board would have these changes.
It would empower the board to establish criteria to rate bidders seeking contracts with the city for banking and insurance services.
The criteria would provide the means to evaluate a bidder's divestment in fossil fuel infrastructure and also the adoption of the FPIC policies.
It would also empower the board to update the rating criteria consistent with best practices from time to time.
Next slide, please.
It would have the board file the current criteria for evaluation with the city clerk.
And then, ultimately, the purpose of all of this would be to have the board evaluate and rate bidders for city banking services and insurance services according to those set criteria and provide that rating along with any supporting materials to the Director of FAS to be used for competitive processes.
Next slide.
Thanks.
So the companion part of this would be to amend the Seattle Municipal Code to require the Director of Finance and Administrative Services to consider these ratings in weighted proportion of 20 percent when looking at requests for proposals for banking and insurance services.
And then under certain circumstances, it would partially modify provisions that are in the code right now that provide for exemption of procurement from competitive bid.
Next slide.
There we go.
So just a bit of background for the record for the folks that are watching.
just to sort of ground the bill of the Green New Deal for Seattle was included in Resolution 31895. This was in 2019. The goal of making Seattle free of climate pollutants to prioritize investment in communities that historically have been most harmed to advance equitable transition from an economy based on extraction and exploitation to one based on regeneration and cooperation and all the things that go with that.
and to create stable, well-paying jobs that prioritize local hire and protected agreements.
The Green New Deal Oversight Board, and we might say Oversight Board going forward, because that's a lot of words.
The next slide was created through Ordinance 125-926.
And the board was established to advise and make recommendations to the mayor and city council related to the Green New Deal and to monitor the city's progress in meeting these intended outcomes and goals.
And with that, if there aren't any questions, I'd be happy to answer them.
Otherwise, I'll pass it along to Tom.
Thank you, Eric.
So I'll pause very quickly.
OK, so I will now dive into just a little bit of additional background context and then some policy considerations.
First, by way of background, there is a track record for the city to establish preferences in its contracting.
There are a number of ordinances that I have listed here that describe those efforts.
Back in 1999, Ordinance 119-748 established non-discrimination and benefits in city contracting that required contractors to provide the same benefits for their employees with domestic partners that they were providing to other employees with spouses.
Also, there is the Equality in Contracting Ordinance that applied standards that allowed for aggressive affirmative efforts to ensure that women and minority-owned businesses have the opportunities to participate in city contracting.
And that was passed in 2005. Next, in 2013, Ordinance 124250 established a requirement that FAS director would utilize socially responsible banking criteria as a factor in selecting financial institutions as vendors for handling city's deposits and providing other financial services.
And then finally, in 2017, ordinance 125-257 established the requirement that prohibited city contractors from engaging in unfair business practices.
So those are the current ordinances that are applied in contracting decisions other than the just general contracting statute writ large.
Next, I'll talk about some of the other jurisdictions that have done similar work in the area that this bill is involved with regarding financial services and the nexus with fossil fuel divestment and FPIC policies.
First, San Francisco, California, Paris, France, Boulder, Colorado, and City of Los Angeles, California have all adopted resolutions in recent years that have urged the insurance industry and city administrators to take practices that divest from fossil fuel companies.
I would distinguish, though, that those other efforts in these other cities are are resolutions urging action rather than strict regulations on the procurement process as is contemplated in this draft ordinance.
And as such, given that they are somewhat different in character, they don't really provide a really clear benchmark to gauge the impact that this draft bill would have on Seattle's procurement process.
And so now a few policy considerations.
in review of the bill.
First, it's with regards to the Green New Deal oversight board's capacity.
So I'll just, as with Eric, I'll just say oversight board from this point forward.
So first, there is the implications with regards to the oversight board's work plan.
A work plan has not yet been established for 2022, and it's unclear how these new requirements would fit into the development of that work plan.
There are currently of the 2022 budget, gave the responsibility to the board of allocating $6.5 million from finance general budget for a variety of investments at the city dealing with the Green New Deal type purposes.
And it's assumed that that particular effort would take up a great amount of the board's time during the year.
further there's the with regards to the alignment of the available meeting time with the city's procurement process these the current cadence of the Green New Deal Oversight Board is as one meeting per per month again it's unclear how the this new responsibility would fit within the within that cadence of that meeting whether or not it would mesh well with the procurement process and then finally there is the concern or an issue, I guess, for consideration with regards to the capacity of the Office of Sustainability and Environment and the Board to rate financial services products.
And furthermore, the Office of Sustainability and Environment has indicated that there may be a need for a resource request given these new responsibilities.
I would say that the bill as drafted establishes this criteria as an authority that the board has, though it is elective, the board does not need to establish criteria nor rate any given RFP against those criteria, though it does, you know, the authority does exist for every type of product, banking services and insurance that the city does procure in a year.
And that's a good segue then for the next consideration.
And that's with regard to the financial and operations risk that exists.
So now, just right off the bat to start, this is not, there is no direct correlation between the bill's provisions and any adverse contracting impact.
It's impossible to know, given that the criteria are not in the bill, and what the criteria would look like if the board developed them, nor how the providers in the marketplace would respond to those criteria.
There's no way to know with those factors.
And so as such, it's not possible to tell what the impact would be with regards to a competitive bid process using those criteria.
But the one thing I would point out, and it will be revealed in the next few slides and in the staff memo, is that the policy change is being made in an area of city service that already marked a constraint with regards to the number of potential providers and there are consequences.
And given the unpredictability about the market response, it's the reason why this information is being provided to the committee.
And so diving into now the specific types of services, first is typically that the bill would provide the oversight board the ability to provide these ratings for banking services.
So these are services, depository and treasury services, and a myriad of other types of financial transactions that are critical to the city's continued operations.
It's not an understatement to say for an overstatement to say that the city cannot operate without a banking service provider.
The current contract with Wells Fargo terminates on December of 2023 after the second of two automatic one-year extensions and a banking services contract will need to be in place in order for the city to continue operations.
And it's worth noting that the last banking services RFP that the city conducted had zero response.
Again, uncertain and unclear what the future holds.
However, it's providing the facts that are available at this time.
Next is insurance.
And so insurance is currently provided by a number of different providers covering approximately 24 distinct policy areas, so different elements of risk, so cyber risk, property risk, liability risk.
The two largest categories are property insurance and excess liability.
With regards to property insurance, it's similar to a homeowner's policy.
The city's buildings and physical infrastructure, and it renews annually on April 1st of each year.
It provides $500 million of all risk coverage, fire and flood, and $100 million of earthquake coverage.
And it's a very complex structure.
I made the analogy to homeowners policy, but it is much more complex than that.
Currently, it's provided by a series of different providers with layered structures.
At each element, or at each layer of loss, a different provider participates.
And the marketplace is such that the providers that are willing to issue insurance at the kind of closer to the margin risk category are fewer than those farther out.
So it's a very tenuous structure where, as described by FAS risk management staff, if a policy provider in a lower tier of the ladder is not available, then the entire structure is at risk.
And again, per FAS risk manager, risk manager staff who had provided this information to us at request, recent marketplace losses have led to expensive claim payments across the municipal marketplace, causing property insurance insurers to cut back or exit the property insurance market altogether.
So as described earlier, this is a marketplace that is currently constrained with regards to the willingness of providers to participate.
And at a minimum, the cost of those services is going up.
The next largest category is excess liability, which covers city's acts of negligence.
This policy renews annually on June 1st of each year.
The coverage kicks in after the first $10 million of any covered loss, which is referred to as the self-insurance retention, which is the self-insurance retention that the city holds in the Judgment of Claims Fund to pay the bottom end, or I guess, in the lack of a better term, the deductible for claims.
Similar to property insurance, it's a layered structure with providers that offer coverage at each tier of risk.
And again, those at the lower tier of risk are fewer.
Again, similar to property insurance, due to large losses in the market, coverage has declined.
Anecdotally, we had $100 million of excess liability coverage two years ago, and now that has declined to approximately $20 million.
Furthermore, the cost of receiving that coverage has increased.
So current practice.
for procuring the insurance is such that the FAS director is exempted through director's rule FAS-01-15, as provided in the Seattle Municipal Code, to not use a competitive bid process for the procurement of insurance that indicates that the market only has one provider or there are other considerations that could mean an unsuccessful competitive bid process.
The bill, in order to have the Green New Deal Oversight Board be able to participate by way of providing ratings with the clerk that would be used in an RFP review process, includes a change that would revise that exemption such that any potential procurement where there are more than one potential providers for a service would be subject to a competitive bid process.
So similar to the prior remarks, unknown how many future insurance purchases would not be exempt.
It is possible that removing the exemption could disrupt the insurance process altogether.
And in the event of that occurring, the city would bear the full financial impact for any type of planning that is not covered, which would result in the need for the city to establish much larger financial reserves to mitigate risk.
I bring these, note these different elements primarily because of the uncertain nature of the of the criteria that would be developed and how the market responds.
It's impossible to predict what that response could be.
However, as Daz described, the services that would be impacted are vital to city operations.
And that is the extent of my remarks with regards to policy considerations, and I'm happy to answer any questions.
Thank you so much, Eric and Tom.
That was a very useful presentation, and thanks for the work that went behind it.
I have some points to make, but I want to first open up for any questions or input from committee members.
Just looking at the Zoom to see if any of you raise your hand.
I'm not seeing anything yet.
Council Member Nelson, go ahead.
I'm still digesting some of this information.
So just for my background information, the Green New Deal Oversight Board was to submit its work plan according to the legislation that created it by July 1, 2020. And it was allocated $6.5 million this past year for this year's expense.
I don't know if that's recurring or for the length.
Anyway.
Where is that work plan?
I think that I heard someone mention that it was in the process, but I'm just wondering if we could see it because my LA went to the meeting last time and didn't see it, so.
Thank you.
Thank you, Council Member Nelson.
Tom, sorry, go ahead.
Were you still speaking?
Thank you for the question, Council Member Nelson.
My knowledge, there is not a current work plan established at this point.
However, as I mentioned, there are ongoing meetings of the Green New Deal Oversight Board each month.
And that topic is one of the elements being considered, including the allocation of the $6.5 million, which, to answer your other question, is a one-time allocation of dollars from the finance general budget.
So it's not an ongoing amount.
It's just for 2022.
A follow-up question.
Council Member Sawant, this legislation adds a seventh duty to the scope of work of this board.
And so I am wondering if the board members are aware of the complexity of this work?
Do they all know about this?
Because my LA did go to the meeting on the 24th, and this was not mentioned in at that meeting and we've gone through the minutes of previous meetings and we can't find mention of this new duty.
So can you give me some back, what do they know about this?
Are you talking about the Green New Deal Oversight Board, I'm assuming?
Yes.
Yeah, it is the board members who recommended this legislation.
In fact, Matt Tremblay and Rachel Heaton, who were here to present the ideas last week, sorry, not last week, but at the last committee, they both are members of the Green New Deal Oversight Board and they're among the members who recommended that we take this legislation up and it was on their suggestion that we, that my office started the work of drafting this.
The board is having a special meeting next week, next Monday to discuss these details.
And we, you know, not the questions that are coming up and we look forward to hearing their conclusions.
Ted, did you want to add anything to what I said or what, to what Tom said?
I know you had your hand up earlier as well.
I put up my hand for the previous question.
or to answer the previous question.
So the authorizing legislation for the Green New Deal Oversight Board did set that 2020 deadline.
However, in practice, it wound up taking far longer for the board to be established.
There was a whole process of it not being funded in former Mayor Durkin's budget because the staffing for the board.
And so that was eventually, that funding eventually came in in a budget amendment proposed by Council Member Sawant And so the board members were actually appointed last fall for the first time.
So they've only, the board has only actually existed for a couple months.
So they are in the process of creating their initial work plan.
One other point is that 6.5 million, that's not for the board's operation.
That is 6.5 million that has been reserved for for community investments for things like building weatherization projects and the board has been, but it's awaiting the board's recommendations on how to spend that.
Got it.
Yeah, I was at the council members one.
I thank you for that Ted.
I was at the meeting last time, so I do know that a couple of minutes I was asking it to the whole board knew about it.
Just and but we don't need to belabor that point.
Is there anybody on the board with expertise in in in municipal banking and insurance bidding practices or the market?
I'm mostly trying to get at this is a pretty complex thing and do the people on the board have the capacity and the expertise and the knowledge of what they're taking on and what this item will entail?
I can just respond in general terms, and Ted, if you want to add specifics, because we had lots of conversations with the Green New Deal Oversight Board, so you should bring in some insights from that, specifically about this question.
But yeah, first of all, as I said, this bill was on the recommendation of the Green New Deal Oversight Board members, so it's not something that is going to be thrust on them.
Sorry?
But it was a couple of them.
I'm asking, yes or no, does the board to all the board members.
Okay, but I would appreciate if you don't use language like yes or no.
You're not conducting a hearing of me.
This is a committee and I'm the chair, so I would appreciate I would appreciate you not using that kind of language.
And yes, all I meant was that two of the board members were at the meeting.
That does not imply that only two board members agree with this legislation.
I don't know specifically how many agree or disagree.
My assumption is that the Green Media Oversight Board as a whole has strong agreement on this because that's the whole point.
I mean, the whole point of appointing this board was because there was a real push from the community that we should have this kind of board that brings in a grassroots voice and also expertise.
To your point, there is expertise that is presented on the board.
And it is based on that expertise that they have made recommendations.
And this is not the only recommendation that they will be making.
They will be making other recommendations as well.
That's the whole point.
The Green New Deal is absolutely urgent because it is now no longer a climate crisis, but it's climate catastrophe.
They will be making other recommendations.
And I believe that they have the expertise.
But Ted, if you wanted to add anything to it, please feel free.
I don't have much to add to that.
I mean, there is, I can send to committee members that report that council members all mentioned during the chair's remarks, the ensuring our future report.
And that's an example of the sort of expertise that is out there amongst, to the question about whether board members have expertise about insurance companies and banks, investment practices, and all of that.
As individuals, I definitely can't speak to each person's expertise, but as a group, they are part of this international movement that has put a great deal of resources into compiling this information.
And they do have access to that.
So that report, for example, was sent to us by Green New Deal Oversight Board members.
So they do have that level of expertise.
Obviously, the Green New Deal Oversight Board wouldn't be evaluating banks on their ability to, you know, back loans or, you know, that, you know, FAS would still be responsible for that aspect of it.
That's, you know, that's outside the scope of what the, you know, that's not what this legislation focuses on.
Right, yeah, thanks for clarifying that.
The Green New Deal board is not, their mandate is not to give general advice on insurance purposes.
That's the FAS's job.
The Green New Deal board brings expertise and knowledge and really just a genuine interest in doing this in the way that minimizes the impact of carbon emissions and on the climate as a whole.
So that's their expertise.
Council Member Morales, go ahead.
Thank you.
So I think, you know, I think this is a valuable proposal.
I'm not questioning the intent or the value of the need to do this.
And I think that, you know, reviewing our contracting processes is where we have power as a municipality to drive systems change.
But I will say that I do worry about the capacity of the board.
As Ted mentioned, they really just got started.
They don't have a work plan yet, and the work plan that they presumably are creating is based on duties that didn't include, didn't didn't consider this particular body of work.
So I'm wondering about the timing of, if this passes, when would they be expected to begin this and what is their sort of ramp up time to be able to do something like this?
I could jump in or stay out of the way, because a lot of chairs want, if you prefer to reply, but I have a technical answer to that.
no go ahead no let's have all the answers yeah go ahead eric um so uh built into the amendments uh constable morales is the uh the first step would be for the board to establish the criteria and then you know file those criteria with the clerk so um that would be at the discretion of the board and on their own timing so in terms of when it would be required of them to establish those criteria there is no timing set in this draft bill it would be their discretion about setting the time that they would do that work, set up those criteria.
Before the criteria are set up and filed at the clerk, the mandate on FAS wouldn't exist.
So that's sort of the first step.
It puts the power in the oversight board to kind of get the ball rolling, so to speak.
So hopefully that's helpful.
And just along those lines, I think it is important to be clear that the bill does give the Green Media Oversight Board discretion on, I mean, this is just basically what Eric said, but I'm just saying it in a different way.
The bill gives the Green Media Oversight Board discretion on whether to do rankings.
So for small contracts, They can choose to not be consulted, so they have the power to manage their own workload.
And we can see the value of this.
First of all, we should not forget that they have enormous expertise in this issue.
That's the whole point of the existence of the board.
I just want to reiterate that point.
And then secondly, they're not working by themselves.
As I said before in the chair's remarks, one of the major sort of motivations behind doing this ordinance also is that it's not something that Seattle is doing in an isolated way.
There is an international movement around it.
And so with that international movement comes a lot of expertise that is shared across the borders.
So it's not like the Green New Deal oversight board members are off in a room somewhere where they have no assistance from the outside, they are actually sharing information and expertise in a really good way.
And, for example, I mentioned the ratings of Liberty Mutual in the Ensuring Our Future report.
That was not something that a few people did.
That report is a product of the work of a lot of people, and that report rates insurance companies from around the world.
It's an example of how this information is already being evaluated by a movement of climate activists and the Green New Deal oversight board members work with the rest of them.
And we will not bring this bill to a vote without a clear statement from the Green New Deal board as a whole, not just individuals.
supporting the legislation, and I'm sure they're watching this committee as well.
I hope that motivates them to make it very clear whether they want this legislation or not, so that all these questions that are coming up about whether they want to do this work or whether they will be able to do this work, so that the board members themselves can clarify all these questions as we clarify as a committee when to have a vote on this bill.
Council Member Nelson, go ahead.
I agree, so thank you.
I agree that we, the City of Seattle, should be using the leverage that it has to reach our policy goals, and it seems as though in this case we're trying to use the power of our our purchasing power of our financial services.
To do that, I think that we should do that with procurement.
The City of Seattle buys a whole lot of things and why aren't we buying our goods, pencils, et cetera, staplers from stores in our city, maybe the CD.
Same with our hiring practices.
Why aren't we hiring youth for permanent positions, et cetera?
This seems a little bit more risky because we're talking about a limited market, from what I understand of their presentation.
You know, when we tried to get a different bank than Wells Fargo, I think Eric just said that we didn't get any bids.
One sentence caught my attention in the presentation on page 14. Quote, the city would bear full financial impact for any type of claim that is not insured.
That makes me worried because I think that our first responsibility is to protect our own assets.
And we have to keep in mind how much do these policies cost and whether or not we can get any policies that meet this criteria.
So I think that this requires some serious consideration going forward.
And I would hope that we have a couple of meetings to go through the implications of this.
Thanks.
Yeah, I don't foresee not having a meeting or two on this, because we have not announced a date for the vote, and we certainly would it would be good actually to have the board here as well or issue a statement about how they envisage their work.
But one thing I will add is in just in terms of the question that was raised is the bill gives the finance and administrative services the discretion to decide when to issue an RFP for financial services, so if they believe they will be unable to get more than one bid, then they have the power to not issue and RFP.
So I think the concern that is raised is a valid one, but it is something that is being addressed in the bill itself.
And furthermore, I will also stress the point that the point of this bill is not to create obstacles for the work of the city of Seattle.
I think we are all fully sort of acknowledging that there are limitations to what this bill can do, but the value of this bill is that it will allow Seattle to be part of an international effort in order to, you know, put this point forward that actually it is, we have to hit the problem where it exists, which is fossil fuel infrastructure and their funders.
That's the basic principle.
Councilman Nelson, were you trying to speak?
No.
Sorry.
If I have follow up, I have follow up questions.
I'll just write them down and send them to central staff and to your staff.
Thank you.
Yes, absolutely, and if you have questions now, yeah, please go ahead and ask, that's not a problem.
And also, I realized earlier I was trying to finish something, but I may have cut off Council Member Morales, so if there was something you wanted to add, Council Member Morales, please go ahead.
No, I would just, it's my understanding that the 2022 work plan is not yet complete.
I couldn't find one, so I just wanted to, again, My concern is a capacity issue and I was looking for that, but it doesn't exist yet.
So I'm looking forward to seeing it when it's done.
Thank you.
Any other committee members wanting to weigh in?
Eric or Tom or Ted, did you want to add anything based on the questions and concerns you heard?
Thank you, Chair Swan.
I would just add, and I believe Eric was going to do this at the time, that he and I will be briefing the Green New Deal Oversight Board on Monday at a special meeting that they've called.
So I just wanted to just add that piece of information in that we will be doing that briefing on Monday.
And I want to reiterate, I am definitely available for follow-up questions that you want to send, if that any, you know, council members or committee members or members of the public listening want to send about the bill, we'd be happy to answer them in detail.
Okay, thank you, Eric, Tom, really appreciate your efforts, and thank you, Ted, and thank you, committee members.
for participating and I believe we can now adjourn the meeting.
So if I don't hear anything, meeting adjourned.
Thank you so much.
Have a good day.